U.N. Climate Chief Resigns

The UN's climate change chief Yvo de Boer shows signs of fatigue at a press conference in Copenhagen in December. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON — Yvo de Boer, the stolid Dutch bureaucrat who led the international climate change negotiations over four tumultuous years, is resigning his post as of July 1, the United Nations said on Thursday.

In a statement announcing his departure, Mr. de Boer expressed disappointment that the December climate change conference of nearly 200 nations in Copenhagen had failed to produce an enforceable agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that climate scientists say are contributing to the warming of the planet.

He also said that governmental negotiations could provide a framework for action on climate, but that the solutions must come from the businesses that produce and consume the fuels that add to global warming.

“Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming,” said Mr. de Boer, whose formal title is executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “This calls for new partnerships with the business sector, and I now have the chance to help make this happen.”

Mr. de Boer, 55, will join the consulting group KPMG as global adviser on climate and sustainability and will also work in academia, his office said.

The funny thing is that a low(er)-emissions world is a laudable goal on its own merit. Had they concentrated on doing that in practical, efficient, and economical ways, instead of trying to use AGW hyperbole to scare us to death, so they could carbon tax us to death, they would be much farther ahead today.

Mario, it is a distraction, nothing unusual is happening, seas have always risen and fallen, ice has come and gone, glaciers have advanced and receded, that things are changing is not in itself interesting. The core to all this, is can anyone define a relationship between CO2 and temperature that can give us warming to the extent the alarmists say. Answer no. Has CO2 demonstrated any relationship with global temperatures in the past.; Answer yes, the CO2 in the atmosphere has risen around 800 years after a temperature rise.

Until the alarmists can get a predictable, measurable and observable relationship between CO2 there is no science, it’s soothsaying.

Back OT, it may be a confluence of events that’s given rise to de Boer’s decision to go. For sure there was an annex giving bureaucrats the rights to tell sovereign countries how their markets could operate and enforcing the agreement that was pulled. This wouldn’t have been a disaster, but for climategate, which wouldn’t have been a disaster except for glaciergate, and with other “gates” following one on the heels of another, and the fact that the next IPCC report will undoubtedley be more circumspect and less dramatic than the last, he’s probably figured out the game is up and took the door to another career.

When you can write out the classic layered atmopshere radation exchange equations.

When you can explain WHY Elsassers work, showing CO2 to be an equal upflux and downflux agent to 30,000 feet, and Plass’s work showing the COOLING contribution of CO2 in the stratosphere, then I’ll listen to your TROLL work.

Interesting to see one of the BIG rats deserting the sinking ship of CAGW.

One of his major previous roles was that of member of the Community Development Carbon Fund of the World Bank. I think he’ll fit in well at LPMG, who are engulfed in a sub-prime accounting scandal:-

“An independent report commissioned by the Justice Department concluded that the “improper and imprudent practices” of now-bankrupt sub-prime lender New Century Financial were condoned and enabled by the company’s independent auditor, KPMG.

He is joining a global CPA firm as a consultant. He is NOT a CPA and can’t be a partner.
Of course CPA’s can become rotten and get indictments. His forte was carbon trading schemes and accountants have more than once given illegal advice for investing. My headquarters for my company exercised a real estate option and took over space from a firm that was over active in tax shelters.
Just follow the money. He is.

Mark Lynas, a climate change consultant who advised the President of the Maldives during the UN negotiations, said many in developing countries are still angry at the failure of Copenhagen. He said the resignation of Mr de Boer showed how much strain the international negotiations are under.

“It is quite bad news he is quitting at this point because the world is in desperate need for a reliable pair of hands to get through this dark period where climate change negotiations are under assault from anti-science deniers, by the Climategate furore and by the US Senate. I think he is very likely to be going because he has had enough. Because the whole process is unraveling at this point.”

However Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change, insisted the negotiations were still on track.

Notice how Milliamp has now become a real denier -a denier of reality. It’s so sad, really.

Mark Lynas was involved in that stunt with the Maldives government having to wear diving suits to hold a cabinet meeting underwater “because of global warming”.

Lynas also refers to “anti-science deniers”, which is exactly how I characterize him and his global warming liars, but then describes the whole global warming lie as “unraveling”. So, he has managed to say something we agree with for once.

I wondered how many comments down the thread we would get before the rats and sinking ships would appear, and the answer was 2. Also, the guy is entitled to go and find a job in the same field, who can blame him.

BUT I also think commenters are right that the world dodged a bullet with Copenhagen. Maybe Dr Bjorn Lomborg will comment on whether scrubbing developing world smokestacks for soot and sulphur would have a more positive payoff than trying to limit CO2 emissions. Those particular pollutants do seem more relevant to the debate, which should be about the quality of the environment, not just whether it matters that the world is getting 0.25C warmer per century.

…to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that climate scientists say are contributing to the warming of the planet.

Just a few months ago, would the New York Times have bothered to insert the parts I emphasized? Debate was over, the science was settled. “…to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that are warming the planet” would have been perfectly acceptable to the editors.

Gee, do you think something happened that made the editors rethink the content they were publishing?

He also said that governmental negotiations could provide a framework for action on climate, but that the solutions must come from the businesses that produce and consume the fuels that add to global warming.

The businesses that witnessed the unabashed capitalism-bashing at Copenhagen, surrounded by activists that wanted them destroyed? Yeah well, good luck with that. You’ll need it to convince those fleeing the unruly hate-fueled mob of the wisdom of stopping to negotiate. Yup, a whole lot of good luck indeed.

“Mr. de Boer expressed disappointment that the December climate change conference of nearly 200 nations in Copenhagen had failed to produce an enforceable agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases”

Lord Monkton was accused of being OTT for suggesting that the text of the Copenhagen agreement would be enforceable, but here it is coming from the horses mouth.

Max Hugoson. I think you do Mario an injustice in calling him a troll. I think he is simply saying that he would like to see informed counter arguments to the sceptic argument debunking app, possibly by the sceptic side producing its own app. i.e. An app to debunk the i-Pod sceptical arguments debunking app.

Several points about your ‘skeptical science’ website and its supposed refutation of global warming skeptics:

1. Never let your enemy state your position. Most of the ‘skeptics arguments’ are a few words, while the ‘what the science says’ rebuttals are a paragraph long! In this way, the website completely mis-characterizes the skeptical argument, making it sound simple and stupid. If the website was really trying to get to the truth, the skeptical arguments would be just as complex as the rebuttals, because that is the reality of the science. It also includes arguments that have been put forth by lay people, not skeptical scientists; an obvious attempt to make skeptics look stupid.

2. The rebuttals are cherry picked. The science that supports the skeptical arguments is ignored. If some aspect of the science is currently in dispute, the website quotes only one side of the dispute and pretends that it is settled science. Very disingenuous.

3. The rebuttals are often self contradictory. For example, one response says that there is no correlation to solar activity and temperature in the late 20th century. Another response says there is a ten year lag in the correlation of temperature to solar activity. One response says there is no observable connection between warming and hurricane activity, while another response says that there is. And so on.

4. The scientific rebuttals are often hand waving. For example, it dismisses the cosmic ray effect because it “has not been proven”! Guess what…the positive feedback of increasing CO2 has also not been proven. In fact, there is more hard evidence for a significant cosmic ray effect than there is for significant positive feedbacks from increasing CO2.

5. The rebuttals are rarely quantified, treating the debate as if it were about warming or no warming. The debate has always been about how much warming will increasing CO2 cause, not if it will cause warming or cooling.

6. The rebuttals are misleading. For example, they state that a part of Antarctica is gaining ice, but the continent as a whole is losing ice. The reality is that the part that is loosing ice is concentrated on the Arctic Peninsula, which is smaller than the part that is ice positive and in a different climate zone than the rest of the continent. The antarctic peninsula warming is hardly indicative of a CO2 warming signature and the peninsula is certainly not representative of the climate over the rest of the continent, but that is the implication put forth by this site.

I could go on and on, describing the seemingly countless ways the author of that site has used manipulation to obfuscate the truth about climate change, but I think I have made my case. In fact, my first point alone is reason enough to discard the website as propaganda.

A conspiracy: ” A flock of ducks were flying following its leader. A not well informed duck asked its companion : where are we flying to?, the other duck answered saying: “I don’t know, I just follow the leader”, then, not being satisfied by the answer it flew to the head of the flock and asked the leader: Where are you going?…and it responded: I don’t know, they are just pushing me ahead”

Excellent points. I’ve been pointing out that the “Skeptical
Science” website is simply a chameleon, trying to capitalize of the superior knowledge and arguments of real scientific skeptics.

Skepticism is an absolute requirement of the scientific method. But alarmist sites like ‘Skeptical Science’ wouldn’t know real skepticism if it bit ’em on the ankle. They sneakily misrepresent themselves, trying to alarm the public through camouflage rather than to do what real skeptics [and the planet itself] have done: falsify the catastrophic AGW hypothesis.

I recall arguments debunking every link posted on that site. John Cook needs to check the WUWT archives, and get educated in real climate science instead of passing off globaloney and being an apologist/enabler for the scientific misconduct exposed in the Climategate emails, where the term denier applies to that blog.

Dishonesty is a hallmark of the AGW crowd. When climate alarmists have to resort to pretending to be skeptics, they have already lost the debate.

The extent of the disconnect between political types at the top of the food chain, and the rest of the commons is captured in that statement where de Boer states “but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming,”

This sense of overwhelming direction of which Yvon speaks exists only within their self maintained echo chamber, fed by astroturf “proteters” and rent seeking CEO’s from GE and other wannabe tapeworms.

Perhaps though, his resignation is the result of seeing a chink of light that split the walls of the chamber – only his mouth is still connected to the old cassette tape.

Mark_K (07:04:49) : “The funny thing is that a low(er)-emissions world is a laudable goal on its own merit.”

Well, there’s something to be said for the cheap fossil fuel energy that has brought the world to its highest standard of living in history. Laudable or not, however, the “goal” of lower CO2 emissions will undoubtedly be met, if only because fossil fuels will eventually become more expensive than alternatives like nuclear, solar, etc., which become cheaper as technology advances.

Unfortunately, attempting to summon the future before its time can be very expensive, and not just in monetary terms.

It isn’t the responsibility of the AGW skeptical community to prove the AGW hypothesis false – it is the responsibility of the warmists to prove the hypothesis true. The hypothesis has not been proven to be true by any stretch of a sane person’s imagination.

Also, anecdotal “evidence” does not support either the side of the argument (for or against the hypothesis of AGW).

For me to accept the hypothesis, the forecasting models based upon the real data (not fabricated, not “adjusted” to fit the conclusion, not cherry picked) can accurately predict the future real temperature of the earth with a reliability of 95% over a minimum of a twenty years. So far the IPCC models have failed miserably over the past decade.

I doubt that the full complexity of the earth’s climate will ever be accurately modelled by humans. I base this belief on personal experience as being a professional forecaster working in the telecommunications industry trying to forecast mundane things such as population, demand for telephone numbers, etc., in an environment where the data series were long and much more accurate than the temperature measurements of the earth.

To re-iterate, it isn’t the responsibility of the skeptics to develop an alternate hypothesis to AGW. It IS the responsibility of the warmists to prove the hypothesis of AGW.

If proof of AGW is so sound, then they wouldn’t be trying to “hide the decline”, losing data, failing to respond to FOIA requests, declining to debate the true science, refusing to share their data so others can test the robustness of their conclusions, etc..

Had great trouble getting into Watts… today from Google. It was acting like it had never heard the website from about 4:40-5:30 or . Outage lasted about an hour. Everything else on Google was fine. — FYI.

The rest of the world may be breathing a sigh of relief due to the discomforting of the UN/IPCC and the failutre of Copenhagen, but we in the EU are no longer subject to democratic government – the Commissioners (who hopld all the power) are not subect to the voters and can do as they please.

And they are still pushing the AGW-inspired ‘carbon tax’ agenda for all it’s worth. The supra-national ‘World Government’ folk don’t let go that easily.
From my Open Europe newsfeed today:

“European Commission will propose plans for EU wide CO2 tax in April
FT Deutschland reports that the European Commissioner for Taxation, Algirdas Šemeta, will propose plans in April for an EU-wide CO2 tax. The article notes that Brussels officials can be’ stubborn’, as this proposal has suffered several failed attempts in the last two decades. A first draft has been seen by the newspaper, and the article notes that the plans include a revision of existing EU minimum rates of consumer taxes on fossil energy products such as gasoline, fuel oil, gas and electricity. On top of that, a harmonised Europe-wide CO2 tax would be introduced from 2013 onwards. Currently only a few countries have such a tax. Roland Stein, a lawyer with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, claims in the article that the CO2 tax will lead to more taxes for consumers and companies.

The article adds that the plans will not just serve as climate measures but would, in the longer term, also serve to fund the EU budget directly. The EU needs to reach agreement by 2013 on a new seven-year budget, and Budget Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski aims to provide the EU with direct funds according to the article. An internal Commission paper is quoted, which states that “EU direct financial sources have up till now hardly been linked with EU political objectives”, and the article suggests that EU taxes would try to serve that purpose now”

It will be very interesting to see who, if anyone, replaces the hapless Mr de Boer. Whatever a candidate’s private beliefs, seeing this as a good career move at this point in history requires breathtaking doses of naivete.

“…had failed to produce an enforceable agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases…”

What did he expect when 1) the world’s most populous countries (and biggest polluters) China and India refused to play along, and 2) some of the discussion centered on how much money the “developed” nations had to fork over to the “developing” countries.

Especially when there is no checklist to follow to see exactly when a country should be moved to the “developed” list. China has no desire to ever get off the “developing country” list. Just look what they can get away with by staying on the list.

Gore and The UN IPCC should be forced to give back their Nobel Peace Prize. The flaws in Gore’s film and the errors in the 2007 UN IPCC Report that have been discovered since the award was given should disqualify both parties. Irena Sendler who risked her life daily during World War II to save the lives of over 2,500 Jewish children is much more deserving. Please sign the petition to demand that Gore and the UN IPCC have their award taken away. http://www.stripgore.com

Mario, it’s coming. We just don’t have the money behind us so we are a bit slower and have had to concentrate on actually getting enough of the science right first, as well as coping with AGW “professional” attacks. What http://www.skepticalscience.com have “answered” is a long list of straw men. I used to believe them until I dug deeper. Now I’ve got Skeptical Science taped, ready to deconstruct.

The ongoing problem is that top scientists are still not facing the music. Even if Yvo goes, all the science organizations still support the AGW creed. Therefore we’re building Neutralpedia. Please, real skeptics, come and help.

Interesting article in Netherlands newspaper.He was right to worry.http://www.climategate.com/wp-content/uploads/UKVersieHenkTennekes.pdf
ARNHEM – “I worry a lot these
days. I worry about the arrogance
of scientists who blithely claim that
they are here to solve the climate
problem, as long as they receive
massive increases in funding. I
worry about the way they covet
new supercomputers. Others talk
about
”stabilizing the climate“. I’m
terrified of the arrogance, vanity
and recklessness of those words.
Why is it so difficult to demonstrate
a little humility?“
Is this a response to recent
climate scandals? Sober criticism
of the failed IPCC UN climate
panel that exaggerated the melting
of the glaciers? No, these areextracts from a column which
appeared exactly twenty(!) years
ago in a British scientific journal.
When the then Director of Policy
Development at the KNMI
(Holland’s Met Office,) Henk
Tennekes put the cat among the
pigeons. Watch out for all the
unsubstantiated claims about
climate!
End
You worry about future science and dark ages Leif?
Maybe scientists cannot exercise humility because some believe they answer to nobody,the sad fact is,they are right.

Good natured discussion, although the interviewer’s (Gordon Brewer) assertion that the dodgy emails / FOI transgressions do not detract from the “fundamental science behind global warming” shows the BBC have still got their heads in the sand on the key issue.

Mario Nelson, your link says “In the last 35 years of global warming, the sun has shown a slight cooling trend. Sun and climate have been going in opposite directions.”

*ahem* The sun is a variable G2V “yellow” star, and the long-term cooling trends of this category star is measured in millions of years (evolving into a dwarf star someday, humankind will be long gone).

As the sun’s heliosphere waxes and wanes, the earth receives various levels of cosmic radiation, which will form droplet nuclei in the atmosphere, eventually producing clouds that increase the albedo of the planet. CERN is studying this in their “Cloud” experiment as I type.

Please see this presentation, “Evidence for pre-industrial solar-climate variability,” delivered by Dr. Kirkby to a colloquium at CERN:

Nice clip of an interview with Pat Michaels of the Cato Institue about the resignation.

He poses the question “Who runs out on a winning hand ?”

Global Warming is a bit like Michael Myers – even when there seems no chance of it surviving, it’ll keep coming back. There are too many vested interests who’ve bought into it, and planning to cash in on it.

Good bye and good riddance to Yvo de Boer. He was a nuisance to the rest of the world, and an enabler of all sorts of terrible nonsense. He should have been fired a long time ago, but for the madness of the world, especially those who had an agenda of global government on their minds. Nor should he be replaced.